[gollum]

In a hypertrophy phase the body requires about one gram per kilo body weight to build muscle, but does it need or benefit from additional protein in a recruitment phase?

Answers on a postcard.

[psychomansam]

I'm gonna ignore the long words. Studies show that protein before exercise is more effective for recovery than protein after. Whether this is effecting the exercise as well and then the recovery as well, or just setting up for the recovery, I don't know, but it doesn't really matter. If you're taking on extra protein, have some before and perhaps some more after. Problem solved.

[Nibile]

I am quite sure that one gram per kilo is not enough for hypertrophy. It's generally 1,5 or even 2 grams per kilo.
From what I know, the excess of protein is transformed into fat 20 times less than the excess of carbs. So, there's no point in stressing about too much proteins.
The problem is that it's difficult to get lean, fat free proteins in normal food. I weigh 65 kg, my muscle mass could be around 50 kg, so 100 grams of proteins a day equals more or less to half a kilo if not more of chicken breast or turkey, otherwise I'll be getting a lot of fats also.
Well, I eat a lot, but half a kilo of roasted chicken breast every day would be boring. That's why I prefer to take supplements. And I still eat a lot.
Sorry, this is a bit off topic.
I think that one gram is the least you should get. Recruitment training is stressful for muscles.
Anyway I was advised to take aminoacids before and after the workout. Before, they help performance, after they help recovery.
This is a totally non scientific knowledge, just personal experience.

[douglas]

Do you need significant amounts of protein in your system if you are only seeking hypertrophy of small muscles such as the finger flexors through, say, fingerboard work?

[shark]

Article here:

http://www.planetfear.com/articles/Nutrition_for_Bouldering_169.html


I've never felt the need or inclination to take supplements

[Nibile]

I don't know how much muscles are involved in fingerboarding, but I can imagine that the amount of protein required would be minimal.
on another hand, I don't know why seeking hypertrophy in this case.
fingerboarding is an isometric effort and I don't know how hypertrphy relates to it. I saw my forearms grow when I started diong lots and lots of curls as an elbow and fingers rehab.

[Paulos]

Agreed, no need to get carried away with protein intake. Too much protein is bad for you

[douglas]

True, and the right amount is good for you.

Nibile, I think there is evidence that isometric contractions stimulate hypertrophy. Although yeah probably not as much as concentric/eccentric. And it's almost certainly different for different people.

[Paul B]

There's nothing wrong with fats (that aren't saturated) Nibs.

[Probes]

I certainly notice protein before a session helps. Ive a habit of having a tin of mackeral on my way to a wall/board session. I used to do the powder thing straight after, only really to help recovery and prevent injury... definately helped recovery, but nothing that a good feed wouldnt do just as well. I think a lot of people do struggle to consume enough protein especially with 'todays' dietry habits, so cant be a bad thing to make sure your keeping a constant supply 'on the go'.  A lot does have to be said for a regulalr small intake of powder shakes I think, all those essential amino acids and such like... technically diet stuff.. blag blag.

[Big Dave]

There's nothing wrong with fats (that aren't saturated) Nibs.

saturated fat in moderation has its benefits too

[TobyD]

I think a lot of people do struggle to consume enough protein especially with 'todays' dietry habits, so cant be a bad thing to make sure your keeping a constant supply 'on the go'. 

I doubt this, to be honest, I would have said that today's dietry habits tend towards an excessive fixation on protein consumption for the general popualtion. Witness stuff like those Holland and Barrett adverts with a load of blokes playing sunday 5-a-side and scarfing down 100% whey bulk up shakes.
I do not doubt that intense training for climbing requires elevated protein intake, but I think that the advantage of supplements is primarily in their convenience for ingestion at the optimum time, rather than total dietry intake (in most cases).

[psychomansam]

  A lot does have to be said for a regulalr small intake of powder shakes I think, all those essential amino acids and such like... technically diet stuff.. blag blag.

Yes, a lot has to be said. It's called marketing bullshit.

For general recovery, skimmed chocolate milk has been shown (Two studies, which i've linked before on here somewhere) to be better than any of the recovery shakes. Why? Because it has the right mix of protein/carbs, and because we'll probably never make a protein formula more advanced than milk, which evolution has designed to make mammals grow.

And if you want to add something to your highly advanced skimmed milk/carb mix to fortify it with extra protein, allow me to recommend the two most advanced products out there:

Milk powders contain all twenty-one standard amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, and are high in soluble vitamins and minerals.[6] According to USAID,[7] the typical average amounts of major nutrients in the unreconstituted nonfat dry milk are (by weight) 36% protein, 52% carbohydrates (predominantly lactose), calcium 1.3%, potassium 1.8%.

 The white of a large egg, or about 1-1/4 ounces, has 16 calories, 3 g of protein, 2 mg of calcium, 4 mg of phosphorus, 55 mg of sodium, 45 mg of potassium, the weensiest little bit of riboflavin, and no fat, cholesterol, or carbohydrates.

Just to be clear, I'm not denying that shakes have an element of convenience (I use gels and powders for running sometimes). I just object to people being lied to with false SCIENCE in the marketing. I'm not a hippy, or even a wonderfully healthy eater, but the natural stuff is just better for you.

[mark s]

  A lot does have to be said for a regulalr small intake of powder shakes I think, all those essential amino acids and such like... technically diet stuff.. blag blag.

Yes, a lot has to be said. It's called marketing bullshit.

i agree ,there is a lot of bullshit out there. i know which supplements work but you wont buy them in any shops.i have had "real" supplements and wouldnt buy any of the others.

as for shakes,it comes down to quick easy protein.i consider them easier than having  a protien meal.i wouldnt go near them if i had the time or money to eat turkey all day,earlier this year i ran out of protein and thought id try without.i lost about 3 or 4lb in a few weeks.

[miso soup]

For general recovery, skimmed chocolate milk has been shown (Two studies, which i've linked before on here somewhere) to be better than any of the recovery shakes. Why? Because it has the right mix of protein/carbs, and because we'll probably never make a protein formula more advanced than milk, which evolution has designed to make mammals grow.

What would you suggest for a lactose intolerant mammal?  My current usual post-climb munch is a hunza nut mule bar (even though I suspect there is no such thing as a hunzanut), a banana and one of those love bars from prat a minger.  With a proper meal an hour or two later when I get home.

[psychomansam]

For general recovery, skimmed chocolate milk has been shown (Two studies, which i've linked before on here somewhere) to be better than any of the recovery shakes. Why? Because it has the right mix of protein/carbs, and because we'll probably never make a protein formula more advanced than milk, which evolution has designed to make mammals grow.

What would you suggest for a lactose intolerant mammal?  My current usual post-climb munch is a hunza nut mule bar (even though I suspect there is no such thing as a hunzanut), a banana and one of those love bars from prat a minger.  With a proper meal an hour or two later when I get home.

Man up.

On a more serious note, take the tablets that mean you can have lactose, then man up.

To be boring, if it's for general recovery, you need mostly carbs with some protein. Just be careful to avoid all fat. Trimmed ham is awesome - put it in bread with ketchup. You can do a big joint pretty cheap and very easy in the oven each week. Otherwise, whatever you find tasty and meets the criteria, or fall back on shakes if you have to.

[rich d]

stolen from another debate
danica-patrick-and-skim-milk
Noth­ing beats pure water, Pow­er­ade, skim milk as work­out drink. Recent researches proven that skim milk is in fact much bet­ter work­out and post work­out drink than water or elec­trolyte “sports” drinks.
We are drink­ing dur­ing work­out to pre­vent dehy­dra­tion from sweat­ing, right?
Trial con­ducted by Lough­bor­ough University’s School of Sports and Exer­cise Sci­ence con­firmed that skim milk is much bet­ter rehy­dra­tor and assists faster after exer­cise recov­ery then com­monly known work­out drinks like water and iso­tonic “sports” drinks.
In the trial ath­letes were exer­cis­ing until they lost 1.8% of their body weight, drink­ing skim milk, skim milk with added sodium chlo­ride, water or Pow­er­ade. Those who were drink­ing skim milk had unchanged urine out­put in the five hours fol­low­ing the exer­cise ses­sions. Vol­un­teers who were drink­ing water or Pow­er­ade had increased their urine out­put in the first two hours after workout.
Level of lac­tose acid (that what makes our mus­cles to feel sore after exer­cise) in mus­cles of skim milk drink­ing ath­letes was 27% lower after 24 hours com­par­ing to those who drunk water or Powerade.
It turns out skim milk is more effec­tive at replac­ing sweat loss dur­ing exer­cise and fight­ing dehy­dra­tion than water or so-called “sport” drinks.
Accord­ing to var­i­ous stud­ies skim milk also can help you build mus­cles faster, speed up after exer­cise recov­ery and to actu­ally loose weight more effectively.
So called skim milk is far from nat­ural milk known to every­one. Skim milk, some­times labeled as fat-free milk, gen­er­ally has less than 0.5% milk fat. For exam­ple whole cows milk has around 4% fat or 8 gram fat per 200 ml (stan­dard glass) of which around 4.6?–?4.8 grams are “bad” sat­u­rated fat. Con­trary to com­mon belief skim milk is not diluted whole milk. It is whole milk with­out fat. Man­u­fac­tur­ers don’t add water to the whole milk as it would make it con­tain less pro­tein and car­bo­hy­drates as well. Calo­rie wise skim milk has 83 calo­ries per cup size (250 g) while whole milk bears 150 per same amount. Both of them con­tain about 8 grams of pro­tein and 12 grams of car­bo­hy­drates per 250 ml of milk. Iron­i­cally fat remov­ing milk pro­cess­ing makes fat-free or skim milk more nutri­ent dense than whole milk apart from our expec­ta­tions that food pro­cess­ing makes prod­uct worse. Skim milk has way less cho­les­terol (about 5 mg in skim milk cup ver­sus 24 mg in whole cows milk variety). Skim milk is often for­ti­fied with var­i­ous vit­a­mins. Whole milk nat­u­rally con­tains A, D, K and E vit­a­mins but those are con­cen­trated in the fat while skim milk is arti­fi­cially enriched with vit­a­mins after fat removing.
Skim Milk As Pro­tein Supplement
Skim milk con­tains lot of var­i­ous pro­teins where casein pro­tein and whey pro­tein pre­vail (up to25%). Casein pro­tein is slowly digested (up to 7?–?8 hours) while whey pro­tein takes only half an hour to digest. It makes skim milk very ben­e­fi­cial as post work­out drink insur­ing you have con­stant pro­tein sup­ply for mus­cle recov­ery and growth. Because casein pro­tein is not imme­di­ately avail­able it actu­ally can pro­mote our body to use fat stor­age for imme­di­ate energy which ben­e­fits effi­cient fat loss.
Mus­cle Build­ing Ben­e­fits Of Skim Milk
Cana­dian study at McMas­ter Uni­ver­sity of 2007 involved three groups of vol­un­teers who were vig­or­ously exer­cis­ing 5 days a week over 12 week period. First group was given two cups of skim milk as post work­out drink (16 g of pro­tein and 24 g of carbs), sec­ond group got soy pro­tein drink with com­pa­ra­ble amounts of pro­tein and carbs and the third one got car­bo­hy­drates only iso­tonic “sports” drink.
By the end of the study all three groups gained mus­cles and most vol­un­teers lost fat but the skim milk drinkers lost the most fat?—?on aver­age over two pounds each while “sports” drinkers lost only 1 pound of fat each com­pared to soy pro­tein (whey pro­tein) drinkers lost almost no fat at all!
April 2007 arti­cle pub­lished in Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Clin­i­cal Med­i­cine informs that milk based pro­tein pro­motes greater mus­cle pro­tein accre­tion (lean mus­cle build up and growth) than soy based pro­tein while con­sumed after resis­tance exercise.
Does Skim Milk Help Weight Loss?
There many debates on much inter­est­ing for every­one who is exer­cis­ing weight loss issue.
Stud­ies con­ducted at Uni­ver­sity of Ten­nessee pub­lished in April 2004 in Obe­sity Research found that obese peo­ple who con­sumed 2?–?3 serv­ings of milk or dairy prod­ucts a day on reduced calo­ries diet lost on aver­age 24 lbs in six weeks?—?sig­nif­i­cantly more than those who con­sumed same amount of calo­ries but did not include milk in their diet.
Var­i­ous researchers report that weight loss in these stud­ies could be mainly appointed to the higher cal­cium intake from skim milk (which is rich in cal­cium). There are still debates whether skim milk or dairy prod­ucts help to lose weight or not but it worth tak­ing a look at 42 years old ex-Olympian swim­mer Dara Tor­res abs to get convinced.
And lis­ten what she says about drink­ing milk. Click on video to play.
http://www.fitbefit.com/best-workout-drink-skim…

[Stabbsy]

[TobyD]

For general recovery, skimmed chocolate milk has been shown (Two studies, which i've linked before on here somewhere) to be better than any of the recovery shakes.
 the typical average amounts of major nutrients in the unreconstituted nonfat dry milk are (by weight) 36% protein, 52% carbohydrates (predominantly lactose), calcium 1.3%, potassium 1.8%.
The white of a large egg, or about 1-1/4 ounces, has 16 calories, 3 g of protein, 2 mg of calcium, 4 mg of phosphorus, 55 mg of sodium, 45 mg of potassium, the weensiest little bit of riboflavin, and no fat, cholesterol, or carbohydrates.
Just to be clear, I'm not denying that shakes have an element of convenience (I use gels and powders for running sometimes). I just object to people being lied to with false SCIENCE in the marketing. I'm not a hippy, or even a wonderfully healthy eater, but the natural stuff is just better for you.

Generally i think i agree with you, except that 'natural stuff is better for you'; this is a bit like the illusion that organic is somehow tastier. It is sometimes, but that is because it is more likely to be local and seasonal, and not grown in a giant shed in the netherlands; not because its organic. Similarly, i'm sure you could live 'heathily' off synthesised food products and supplements, but if you had a modicum of discrimination, you would acknowledge that it all tasted like shit. Which is probably what you were saying anyway, but i just fancied a small rant.
If nothing else real food is just nicer to shove into your face than some whey / carb blend which someone has desperately tried to shove chemicals into to make it taste like something else which you would actually find appetising. That said, sometimes i am just too lazy to boil eggs or whatever before i go out climbing, so a bit of whey and a banana is just less hassle.
If you avoid *all* fat however, you will end up with an intreresting range of neurological problems, vitamin deficiencies (as several are fat soluble) and probably getting ill pretty often.   None of which will aid the presumed oucome here, which is being better at climbing up rocks.

[Paul B]

two studies, which i've linked before on here somewhere

Do you mind re-linking? I'm genuinely interested in reading these as other posts in this thread aren't really making a fair comparison (i.e. they're comparing skimmed milk to lucozade style drinks).

The other comparison only shows Milk to be better than the Soy derived whey/carb mix (my whey certainly isn't dervied in this way). This to me only proves the benefit of (slow digestetion) Cassein protein? I'd like to see a derived Cassein protein product compared directly to that of milk with a comparable calorific breakdown in order to draw conclusions of milk being a wonder recovery drink (I'm not doubitng that it might be, but the research presented thus far doesn't show it).

In fact:

Conclusions: Acute ingestion of both WH and CS after exercise resulted in similar increases in muscle protein net balance, resulting in net muscle protein synthesis despite different patterns of blood amino acid responses.

double edit:

We conclude that the feeding-induced simulation of MPS in young men is greater after whey hydrolysate or soy protein consumption than casein both at rest and after resistance exercise; moreover, despite both being fast proteins, whey hydrolysate stimulated MPS to a greater degree than soy after resistance exercise. These differences may be related to how quickly the proteins are digested (i.e., fast vs. slow) or possibly to small differences in leucine content of each protein.

[psychomansam]

For general recovery, skimmed chocolate milk has been shown (Two studies, which i've linked before on here somewhere) to be better than any of the recovery shakes.
 the typical average amounts of major nutrients in the unreconstituted nonfat dry milk are (by weight) 36% protein, 52% carbohydrates (predominantly lactose), calcium 1.3%, potassium 1.8%.
The white of a large egg, or about 1-1/4 ounces, has 16 calories, 3 g of protein, 2 mg of calcium, 4 mg of phosphorus, 55 mg of sodium, 45 mg of potassium, the weensiest little bit of riboflavin, and no fat, cholesterol, or carbohydrates.
Just to be clear, I'm not denying that shakes have an element of convenience (I use gels and powders for running sometimes). I just object to people being lied to with false SCIENCE in the marketing. I'm not a hippy, or even a wonderfully healthy eater, but the natural stuff is just better for you.

Generally i think i agree with you, except that 'natural stuff is better for you'; this is a bit like the illusion that organic is somehow tastier. It is sometimes, but that is because it is more likely to be local and seasonal, and not grown in a giant shed in the netherlands; not because its organic. Similarly, i'm sure you could live 'heathily' off synthesised food products and supplements, but if you had a modicum of discrimination, you would acknowledge that it all tasted like shit. Which is probably what you were saying anyway, but i just fancied a small rant.
If nothing else real food is just nicer to shove into your face than some whey / carb blend which someone has desperately tried to shove chemicals into to make it taste like something else which you would actually find appetising. That said, sometimes i am just too lazy to boil eggs or whatever before i go out climbing, so a bit of whey and a banana is just less hassle.
If you avoid *all* fat however, you will end up with an intreresting range of neurological problems, vitamin deficiencies (as several are fat soluble) and probably getting ill pretty often.   None of which will aid the presumed oucome here, which is being better at climbing up rocks.

I agree with everything you just said. My comment was intended to be about milk and not a general one; sorry for the lack of clarity. As for fat, absolutely we need it. Just try to take it on before, rather than after exercise (although perhaps not just before). I switched to fruit and nut rather than fruit muesli and actually noticeable felt better for it. I had a lovely tin of mackerel in tomato sauce before climbing today. On that note, sometimes I eat something and think wow, that was exactly what I needed. Always worth listening to your body.

[psychomansam]

-Do you mind re-linking? I'm genuinely interested in reading these as other posts in this thread aren't really making a fair -comparison (i.e. they're comparing skimmed milk to lucozade style drinks).

I'll try hunting when I have time. (Prob tomo when I'm avoiding essay writing)

[TobyD]

On that note, sometimes I eat something and think wow, that was exactly what I needed. Always worth listening to your body.

 

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

[lukeh]

Supplements ... a rather expensive way of getting a bit of milk.

Tonight's Panorama deals with 'sports products' and so should be of relevance to this thread.

[Nibile]

Putting together supplement and running shoes is very biased.
Also, the idea of performance enhancing supplement is not very clear...